I reviewed these troops before they left Aries for the frontier. They were prime legionaries from the lands north-east of Mantua, from the Abruzzi, from Calabria and Apulia, and there was one legion recruited in Transalpine Gaul itself. Many of the women and children of the Gallic legionaries crowded into Aries to weep, or wave, farewell to their sons, lovers, husbands and fathers. I looked on all with pride, and a love in which even then I felt the tender and ready tears of old age prick my eyes. I warned Varus of the dangers which brood in the mirk recesses of the German forests. I said to him: 'Advance carefully, behind a fringe of scouts; guard your flanks and rear; remember always, do not for a moment forget, that the most valuable and necessary members of your army in such an expedition are the scouts; it is on the quality of your intelligence that the safety of our soldiers depends.' I repeated the warning again and again till he sighed (I am sure) to be so oppressed by the timid alarms of an old man. This is the curse of age: to find experience discounted, set at naught. I took the auspices, which were good, and assured the troops of my love and confidence.
Tonight there is curfew in the city. I have ordered that the Praetorians patrol the streets till dawn, that they post guards by the Senate House to forbid entry and by the Temple of Capitoline Jupiter, and that the Field of Mars be occupied by at least a cohort. Guards at the gates have been doubled.
I cannot sleep. I sleep little now, rarely more than two hours at a stretch, and am accustomed to require slaves to be on hand to read to me through the black silence of night. But there is no solace in words now, however well-arranged. Should I send an order to Tiberius to return to Rome? Or send him straight to the Rhine? Decisions, which used to be prompted by instinct, intuition, guided by the counsel of those I trusted, now perturb me. Only Livia remains… and she… enough of this vein.
I have a cold in the head, and have coughed, sneezed and spluttered my way through the darkness. My legs are leaden and my shoulders ache. I am troubled by the sharp-stabbing pains of gout, and my stomach is disordered. If I close my eyes, I am assailed by nightmare images of slaughter: I hear Roman voices shriek in terror and despair through the limitless forests; I smell sweat and fear and the reek of horse-flesh, blood, sour marsh vapours and the ordure of panic. I am an old man, nearing my end, trapped in a corner between the walls of achievement and death… and what, I ask, does it signify? In some cities of Asia, in defiance of my expressed wishes, they worship me as a God. Who ever heard of a God with gout and a cold in the head?
This disaster, the gravest I have known, leads me to question what I have achieved. There was a little yellow-haired girl, about six or seven, who ran beside the marching legions for some fifty paces, trying to grab hold of her father's hand, and crying 'Daddy, Daddy'; he, not daring to break step, looked down on her with a countenance into which I read love, anguish and embarrassment. But if I were to send for that little girl, what could I do for her that would heal the wound cut open by my policies and by Varus' criminal carelessness? Deprived by cruel fate of my own children I grow ever more tender towards other people's; old man's tears again.
It was Livia who brought me the news. No one else dared. That thought also distresses me. It makes me feel like a monarch, even a tyrant, whereas I call the Gods, in whom my faith tremblingly rests, to bear witness that I have never sought to be more than the First Citizen of Rome, the Father of my Country – that title the Senate was pleased to grant me, in which I had delighted. But now only Livia would approach me with the news that Varus had led the legions into a trap and that they had all been swallowed up and destroyed. They were lured into the forest, obstructed by felled trees, swamps and undergrowth, cut down in a rain-storm. Varus, the reports said, killed himself – that Roman death that is no better than an abandonment of faith, the last resort of cold egoists like Brutus; (and I am not forgetting that I was once tempted to it myself). Captured legionaries were crucified, or beheaded and eviscerated as offerings to the savage and unknown gods of these northern forests. I looked into the familiar landscape of Livia's face, and could read nothing there, as, sparing me nothing, she spat out the facts to me in short brutal sentences. Her very laconicism made it impossible for me to find any refuge from the truth. But when I began to lament my legions, she stopped me.
'There may be time for tears later. But now we must be vigilant. Military disaster can be the seedbed of revolution. You can't doubt, my dear, that those who hate your regime will even now be rejoicing at what has befallen Rome. They will be saying that their hour has come. If you take my advice, which I know you are loth to do nowadays, ever since I first gave you advice that tasted like bitter medicine, you will at once round up fellows like Lucius Arruntius, Asinius Gallus and Marcus Lepidus, and clap them under house arrest – at the very least…'
I nodded, disregarding the call for illegality. I submitted to what was expedient. Anyway, I could sympathize with her fear; she looked on my old age and weakness and hoped to make the world safe for Tiberius.
So now, I listen to the tramp of the Praetorians and my heart cries, 'Varus, give me back my legions…'
Livia's promptitude prevented any open display of disaffection. We were able to release the detainees in a couple of months. Though I was relieved to be rid of the fear of civil disorder, I was also dismayed by the way in which Roman nobles acquiesced in this disaster. I was indeed the only man in the city who let his beard and hair grow uncut in token of my mourning for the lost legions. When the nobility saw that nothing had changed, they shrugged their shoulders and got on with their hunting and dicing, their love affairs, business matters, theatres and games; 'like so many capons' I found myself muttering. Did Romans no longer care when Rome suffered defeat and disgrace? Was the indifference to be my legacy?
I should have liked to consult Tiberius, who, with all his faults, is a man of the old style, but I had sent him directly to the Rhine to guard against any German incursion. Nobody understands the Germans of course, but Tiberius has a great virtue which renders him the ideal commander against barbarians; he is never impressed by them. Yet, because he is the most prudent and careful of men, he never relaxes his vigilance and would never commit the error of despising any enemy. I have come to rely on Tiberius; it is ironical, and Livia's triumph. I have been making up my accounts. In the nature of things I am unlikely to live much longer, and my body has become a repository of disease – a doctors' delight, if doctors were less ignorant than they are. I deposited my will with the Vestals some years ago, and have no reason to change it. It will demonstrate my love and high regard for Livia. It is a public tribute to my marriage. Our marriage, I should say, for we have indeed been partners. My mausoleum is in the course of construction. It lies within sight of the Altar of Peace which will for ever be the memorial of what I have done for Rome. Yet I feel the need for something more explicit; not this memoir, which is a personal testament, but a public statement which will spell out my achievement. I am therefore causing to be prepared a record of what I have done and this will be inscribed on two bronze pillars to be set up before my tomb. It will be a statement to challenge the corruption of future historians, for I know only too well how historians can distort a man's life and deprive it of its true significance.
And yet, as I view what I am writing for this record, I find myself conceding that there is justice in the historians' suspicions. Words mislead as much as they inform; after all, I knew Cicero well. What a master of rhetoric he was; every sentence in his letters, essays and speeches cries out for interpretation; he was godly in eloquence and twisted as a corkscrew. Article I: 'At the age of nineteen and on my own initiative and at my own expense, I raised an army by means of which I liberated the Republic which was oppressed by the tyranny of a faction. For which reason, the Senate, with honorific decrees, made me a member of its order in the consulship of Gaius Pansa and Aulus Hirtius, giving me at the same time consular rank in voting, and granted me the imperium. It ordered me a propraetor, together with the consuls, to see to it that the State suffered no harm. Moreover, in the same year, when both consuls had fallen in the war, the people elected me consul and a triumvir for the settlement of the Republic.'
There is no lie here. But anyone who has read the first Book of these memoirs knows that it is less than the whole truth. You will note that I eschew names, save for the consuls used to date the year. Names in this context can only breed dissension. My life has been devoted to stilling this spirit, to the act of reconciliation. Yet here, in the privacy of my secret memoir I may pause. I cannot even yet bring myself to be honest about Antony, the tyrant whose faction oppressed the Republic that year. I told some of the truth in that first volume of memoirs which abruptly halted in the year of my Triumph. Now let me dwell on that word 'faction' which lexicographers define as 'a company of persons associated or acting together, mostly used in a bad sense; a contentious party in a state or society'. Certainly, in the second sense, the word might as well be applied to me and my supporters as to Antony
